[ENGL 527]
For class this week, we were to create our own “four icon challenge” (see here: Alan Levine) – a visual representation of a film reduced to its elements through four icons (see here: Kyle Tezak). Choosing a film was difficult; I wanted to make a representation of one I liked that wouldn’t be too obscure.( I did this in class with my students as a quick design challenge with The Princess Bride, but thought that would be too easy for class.) This was another product of Inkscape (which is proving to be an awesome program for the price – free!), and while it looks simple, quite a bit of care was given to make it appear as such. Each of these icons was of different dimensions, and it took quite a bit of moving the elements around to notice that they would look more uniform if they were all the same height to appear square. Because each icon was an individual element and of an off-white background, the dropper tool was used to match the space in between and around the icons all to the same shade of white. For the blue gel on the spotlight I filled the bulb area, added a glow effect, and blended the edges to give the appearance of illumination. Again, nothing fantastic, but if makes me think of the blue filters used in movies to suggest the light of the nighttime sky. I contemplated coloring in the label of the beer bottle, but it proved rather difficult to execute with precision, and further, the prevailing black and white with only a small use of color seemed more effective/evocative of my choice of film.
Can you guess what my movie is?
Answer (highlight for reveal): Blue Velvet
page tectonics 